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Scared Stiff non-starter and lower playfield dead. Any ideas please?

  • Thread starter Thread starter MarkR
  • Start date Start date
M

MarkR

Greetings from a newbie. I recently bought a Scared Stiff, but left it in the shed for a couple of months while the room it was going in was being finished.

Now it doesn’t start up properly: The upper board general illumination comes on, but nothing else. The diagnostic LEDs appear to be indicating powered up but not started. The lower playfield is completely dead, as is the audio (apart from the start-up beep) and the DMD.

I know a little electrical engineering, but Pinball machines and very detailed electronics are not my thing. Any idea where to start please? Has anyone ever seen the same symptoms?

All fuses are fine, and voltages are present on the PCB test points.

The batteries had leaked, with exudate all over the electronics under the battery box. I have cleaned this off and replaced the batteries. It looks like the previous owner had never opened the back box.

Should I be thinking of replacing the CPU board?

Any help would be hugely appreciated!

Happy Christmas, Mark
 
Hi Mark, welcome to the forum. How bad is the battery acid damage...do you have a pic? What did you clean it off with, was it something that neutralises the acid?

Cheers
Chris
 
Hi Mark,

I had some of battery acid damage on my SS and it basically screwed the entire machine, so I guess this may well be your problem if you've had a leak. Although in my case it was playing havoc with the voltages.

Before replacing an entire board I'd contact Andy Netherwood at Pinball Mania to see if it can be repaired as this would be a fraction of the cost of sourcing and replacing an entire board.

Whereabouts are you based? It's always worth checking to see if anyone local can help out.

Cheers

John
 
Welcome to the group. As John says, post where you are and there is often a local who is happy to take a look.

The battery acid certainly sounds like a serious culprit but I wouldn't exclude checking all the connectors are correctly seated by removing and reconnecting them. The moisture in a shed might have caused them to fur up. It is a simple and cheap fix for many things.

This forum is also full of people willing to offer their advice and Andy at Pinball Mania is The Legend for off site part fixes or on site visits too.
 
Measure for 5v on the CPU not the driver board. Anything below 4.9 volts and the CPU won't boot. If the top and bottom LEDs remain on with the middle one off, the CPU is not booting.

If the voltage is good, remove the top two ribbon cables from the CPU and see if it boots without these connections.
 
Good morning gentlemen, many thanks for the instant replies! This will give me something to do over boring Christmas, so it can’t be all bad :)

The battery damage was quite bad, but the cells had clearly leaked years ago so it was nothing new, and the fault appeared before I cleaned or touched anything. I cleaned it all off with soapy water (!) and then isopropyl alcohol, blown dry with compressed air.

My two sons and I spent all day yesterday unplugging, cleaning and reconnecting every connector, looking for broken wires, and anything else obvious.

We also took off both ramps, changed all the lamps for LEDs, fitted Cliffy protectors, skull pile LEDs, and so on: I thought it best to do everything in one hit while it was in pieces. I half-expected it to work once reassembled (how foolish of me!) once all the connectors had been fiddled about with.

One thing which might be relevant: The coin door interlock switch is not connected, with the three pairs of leads permanently shorted with what looks like factory-standard links. One had fallen off, which I replaced. There is no plate on the door which could close the switch anyway, and no evidence of anything missing. Is all standard for Scared Stiff?

<blockquote>
Measure for 5v on the CPU not the driver board. Anything below 4.9 volts and the CPU won't boot. If the top and bottom LEDs remain on with the middle one off, the CPU is not booting.
If the voltage is good, remove the top two ribbon cables from the CPU and see if it boots without these connections
</blockquote>

Great, thanks for that, I’ll do it this afternoon, after my Christmas shopping. Yes, top and bottom LEDs are on, and, as per the manual, the machine is clearly not booting. It just sits there with only the backboard lit up, but does nothing. Presumably the CPU provides trigger voltages to the triacs which power all the illumination and other stuff? So if the machine does not boot, most of the lights don’t come on? Is that right?

At first I thought, dead machine – don’t worry, easy fix: not electronics or software but something simple and traceable by an electrician like me, eg fuses, broken wires or connectors. It appears that’s not so! I grew up with vacuum tubes which you can just look at and understand, but life is no longer that simple :)

I’m quite happy to pay to get a board fixed, but obviously don’t want to send the wrong board in. Is it the CPU or power board? Some chap in USA sells new CPU boards for about USD 200-odd which is worth it since mine is all mucky anyway. It’s crap design putting dry cells on a PCB anyway, so a chance to shift them off-board is good. Does anyone stock spare boards in the UK?

I’m North of Diss, near Norwich, UK.

Again I’m happy to pay someone to fix the infernal machine, but I don’t like having things in my house that I don’t understand (except for my woman, in which respect I’ve given up :) ), so I want to have a go myself first.

Thanks again for the help. And Happy Christmas everybody. (Don’t worry, it doesn’t last for long.)

Mark
 
5.11Vdc and 12.05Vdc is present on the CPU board itself. With all connectors except J201 power, stuill nothing happens. Top and bottom LED on, centre LED off.

Battery corrosion present, possibly made worse by the damp environment in the shed.

A new CPU board needed?
 
Oops, I meant of course, ... With all connectors UNPLUGGED except J201 power ...
 
I'd go for a new CPU. The battery acid will probably cause you grief long term. You can send the board to me for testing if you want to. CPU is the most likely culprit.
See www.pinballmania.co.uk for details of who I am.
 
Thanks for the advice. I have replaced the whole CPU board and ASIC (swapping only the security chip and game-specific EPROM). The game now works fine.

Looking at the original CPU board, there is quite a bit of corrosion here and there, so is it even worth looking at? Even if repairable, might it give more trouble in the future? I’m minded to not bother trying to get it fixed.

I could of course fix it then sell it on to subsidise the cost of my replacement, but I’m not the kind of bloke who sells junk to people, only to give them more grief in the future!
 
If it was confirmed as fixed by someone like Andy at Pinball Mania, I would think it would be good for a long enough time to be worth it. All depends on the cost of fixing it and what it would be worth to someone buying it. ;)
 
If there's quite a bit of corrosion at multiple points on the board then I think your better off not bothering.....sounds like it's had it day to me :(
 
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